Steel is the term used to refer to alloys of iron and small percentages of carbon. In some nomenclatures, steel refers to any alloy in which carbon is present in amounts of between about 0.02 and 1.5% carbon by weight, but in other uses refers to alloys containing up to 2.25% or more carbon. Although the exact percentage borderline may differ depending upon the nomenclature, alloys with higher carbon contents are usually referred to as "cast iron" rather than as steel.
As is known to those generally familiar with steels, the iron and carbon are present in two main constituents, ferrite (iron) and cementite, an iron carbide compound having the general chemical formula Fe.sub.3 C. Most steels will also contain additional elements such as manganese, silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, oxygen, and traces of others. other steels contain considerable percentages of elements such as nickel, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium or titanium which give the resulting steel various appropriate or desired properties.
As known to those skilled in a variety of arts, steel is used in construction, ship hulls, auto bodies, machinery and machine parts, cables, abrasives, chemical equipment, and numerous other uses such as belts for tire reinforcement and the like. Within these uses, steel should desirably exhibit a number of metallic properties including compressive strength, tensile strength, ductility, hardness, and other related properties that are advantageously characteristic of useful metals.
Fullerenes is a term given to a recently postulated and discovered form of molecular carbon in which the carbon atoms are joined to form spheres, or sphere-like structures. Because of the resemblance between the structure of these molecules and the geodesic domes designed and championed by the architect Buckminster Fuller, such molecules have been designated as "fullerenes", and the basic and most stable molecule, a sphere having 60 carbon atoms, has been designated "buckminsterfullerene". For the same reasons, fullerenes have also been referred to as "buckyballs."
The best available evidence indicates that fullerene molecules were first identified and isolated in 1985, with rapid progress in their study beginning in 1990 when a relatively straightforward method of forming them was discovered by Donald Huffman and his co-workers at the university of Arizona; Huffman, "Solid C Physics Today, Nov. 1991, pp 22-29. In the last two years, fullerenes have received tremendous attention because of their apparent high chemical and physical stability, which is consistent with what would be expected and predicted based upon their molecular structure.
For a wide variety of electrochemical as well as mechanical reasons, one particularly sought-after use of fullerenes is to utilize the relatively large size of a the fullerene molecule, approximately 1 nanometer (nm, 10.sup.9 meter), to "wrap" a metal atom to produce molecules which have been speculatively referred to as metal fullerenes or, as used herein, metallofullerites with very unique characteristics. To date, however, no success has been realized in producing metallofullerites in quantities or at costs suitable for commercial utilization.